"Huh?"

"He carries the virus that makes the vaccine."

"You mean like a shot?"

"Yes, Clay. Like a shot."

Jenny

THE children had begun to scream when the lights went out.

Their screams lured the draculas to the storage room door. They thumped and scratched and pounded on it, jerking and rattling the knob, pressing up against the square window in the door and blocking out the faint emergency lights from the playroom, which plunged the closet into complete darkness.

Working from memory, Jenny flailed out her hands until she found the shelf on the wall, then followed it until she came to the children's art supplies: boxes of crayons, construction paper, bottles of finger paint, balloons...

Dammit, where are they?

Her probing fingers found their way into a cardboard box, locking onto a cylindrical, pen-shaped object. She shook it vigorously and bent it in half with a faint CRACK. Immediately, it gave off a faint, green light. Glow sticks. Essential for any underage patient afraid of the dark.

Apparently encouraged by the light, the monsters outside the door became even more frantic in their zeal to get in. The glass window shattered, and a taloned arm forced itself through, slashing at the air inches from Jenny's face.

Jenny lurched away, tripping over someone's legs, falling onto her ass. The children continued to scream. The dracula thrashed and swiped its claws. It even managed to push its head through, scraping its face against the jagged, broken glass, its neck kinked at an odd angle.

Jenny tore herself away from the horror, reaching for the box of glow sticks. To quiet the screaming of the children, she began bending, shaking, and passing them out as fast as she could. There were different colors, red and purple and yellow and orange, all giving off a diffuse, pastel light that reminded Jenny of another of Randall's favorite VHS tapes--the movie Tron.

But rather than pacify the kids, the increased illumination allowed everyone to focus on the spastic dracula stuck in the window.

"Shh. Quiet. Everyone quiet down. It's okay. The worst is over."

She was wrong. The creature went from hissing to screeching, its head and arm flopping around as if in the throes of a grand mal seizure. Its eyes rolled up, showing the whites. Froth, then blood, sprayed from the torn vestiges of its lips. It began to shake its head, faster and faster, beating it against the sides of the windows, shredding off its own ears in the process.

Then the monster's eyes bulged, protruding like hardboiled eggs. With an audible POP, they escaped their sockets, dangling by their optic nerves.

No...not the nerves. The eyeballs were pierced on the ends of two talons.

Another dracula had dug into the back of this one's skull.

A millisecond later the dead creature was yanked free of the door. Jenny and the children listened to the frenzied feeding. Growls. Snapping jaws. Gurgling blood. Wet smacking.

It was like listening to a BBQ in hell.

Jenny sat back in the corner of the room, four children desperately clinging to her. Their hysterical screaming eventually subsided to steady sobs. Jenny kept her arms around them, patting arms, tousling hair, trying to figure out what to do next while nervously waiting for something else horrible to happen.

But nothing did. Eventually the feasting sounds died down, then vanished all together.

Jenny began to count her heartbeats. At any moment, she expected another dracula to try and force itself in through the window.

By the time she reached two hundred, all sounds had ceased.

There was only silence.

Dreadful, expectant silence.

"Are they gone?" one of the kids asked.

"I don't know," Jenny answered. "Is anyone hurt? Did anyone get bit?"

"I wet my pants."

"It's all right," Jenny told the little boy. "We can take care of that later. You've all been very brave so far. I need you to keep being brave."

Jenny tried to stand, but eight little hands clung to her.

"I have to check to see if they're still there."

"No! Don't go!"

"It's okay. I promise I'll be fine. I need to get to the intercom and call my husband."

"Is he the big man with the chainsaw?"

"Yes."

"Is he going to save us?"

Jenny pictured Randall.

Big, clumsy, stupid Randall.

Loyal, loving, brave Randall.

"Yes," she said, surprising herself with the certainty of her conviction. "He is."

Lanz

KURT Lanz, MD, inhaled through the scorched, gaping hole in his face where his nose used to be. Part of him--the rational, thinking part--knew that when he'd yanked off his burned nose to eat, he'd managed to deviate his septum. But that didn't matter now.

All that mattered was blood.

After killing the lights, he'd scampered to the geriatric ward, giddy with the thought of defenseless old people. But it had been picked clean.

Next, he'd gone to the Birthplace, but found the entrance locked. He couldn't fit through the small window hole in the door, which infuriated him, because he could smell humans in there.

Oncology was next and yielded similar results. The beds were empty, the ward in disarray. Lanz tried to squeeze a few drops of blood from a severed leg he'd found on the floor, but it had been sucked dry. He made do chewing on a blood-soaked bed sheet, swallowing the torn strips.

The many others roaming the halls had sensed their blood supply gone and begun to turn on each other. Lanz even joined in, pouncing on a smaller creature--a teenager--that was being eviscerated by a group of larger adults. Lanz got away with a kidney and half the liver.

Neither soothed the growing ache in his belly.

He craved blood.

He wanted it more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life.

Half-insane with bloodlust, he remembered that bitch up in pediatrics. Jenny. Assuming she'd been resourceful enough to fight off the horde, perhaps she was still alive. Maybe she'd even managed to protect some of the children.

The innocent, defenseless, delicious little children.

Only one way to find out...

Lanz slunk into the stairwell, taking the steps three at a time, his mouth salivating at the thought of the nurse's sweet, warm blood.

Stacie

AT first, she thought she'd lost consciousness, but the pain was still there, like her back was ripping itself apart, and then the lights returned, only in a much diminished state--nothing but a cold, blue glow emitting from the battery-backup above the door to her room.

Two figures emerged out of the shadowy corridor--Adam and Nurse Herrick hurrying back.

"What happened to the lights?" Stacie asked through gritted teeth.

"I don't know," the nurse said.

"Epidural," Stacie moaned. "I didn't want it, wasn't part of the plan, but now--"

"I'm sorry, sweetie." Nurse Herrick patted her hand.

"What do you mean 'sorry'? I can't keep..." Her voice trailed into another groan as Adam came around and put his hand on her shoulder. "Don't touch me," she seethed through the pain.

"Baby, this too shall--"

"Oh my God, if you quote another fucking bible verse, I'm gonna rip your eyes out of your head. Nurse, get me the epidural."

"I'm not qualified to administer it."

Desperate now, she pleaded, "How hard can it be?"

"It's a spinal block. I could accidentally paralyze you for life. You could get an infection and die. It takes a high level of skill that I don't have."